park

My husband was invited to speak on a panel at the Borrego Springs Film Festival a few weekends ago, so we spent the weekend in the quaint, tiny desert town. it’s about a three hour drive from Los Angeles, in east San Diego county. You may recognize it from last year’s outfit post during the wildflower superbloom. This time it was too early in the season for any flowers to appear but the desert landscape was still pretty.

Part of the challenge of living in the city is that there aren’t a lot of undisturbed natural settings that I can use as backdrops. I don’t really like the style of city buildings, concrete, etc. for my outfit photos. So whenever I get the chance to take photos somewhere in nature, I try to take advantage of it.

Even though there weren’t any flowers and the landscape was dry, the lighting at magic hour in Borrego Springs was beautiful. The light filtered through the haze of clouds and eventually the sun went behind the mountains, but enough light still came over to give enough of that golden hour glow.

This is a ModCloth dress, it was from this past summer season but I bought it on sale in the fall for only $23! I wanted to wear something that would pop against the earthy colors of the desert and the primary colors in this plaid do the job, I think. The cutout back with the bow detail is super cute; it shows some skin without being too scandalous. Note- it’s not possible to wear a normal bra with this. I had to wear my silicone pasties.

This is me trying to look cute in a stereotypical blogger pose. Haha.

The film festival itself was fun; Ross’s film won the jury prize for Best Feature! The town is such a quiet and charming place. I would love to come back especially if the flowers bloom again.

Me, having problems with color? Yep. When you like every color, narrowing a palette down to maintain a consistent blog/Instagram look becomes really hard and sometimes almost anxiety inducing (ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little). Case in point: the outfit featured in today’s post. I don’t normally gravitate toward dark blues and grays, but sometimes I need some neutrals/dark colors to break up the usual pastels. This sweater is from Sugarhill Boutique. I love their sweaters and knitwear. Their prints are so cute and the sweaters are really quite comfortable. I find that they pair with jeans just as well as they do with skirts.

Even though this particular outfit is a departure from my usual pastel and bright color palette, it felt fitting on that weekend. The temperature was in the high 60s/low 70s and it actually felt like autumn in Los Angeles. (Of course, the next week it went right back up into the 90s. Ugh). The navy sweater has stripes but look a little closer and you can see a few little birds and hearts standing about on the stripes.

I recently bought a new camera lens because I wanted to improve my photography for the blog. The kit lens that came with my camera is fine, but I wasn’t getting the kinds of pictures I wanted. I did a bunch of research and settled on this one. I’m still learning, and sometimes it’s annoying to take a bunch of photos and then you realize that a lot of them are out of focus. But that’s what practice is for, right? So you can get better.

Case in point, this set of outfit photos was the second one with my new lens (the first shoot using the new lens was this post). It was incredibly frustrating because the auto-focus kept focusing on the wrong parts of the photo. Ross and I eventually got a few decent shots, but it was definitely a learning experience. (I also figured out how to manually set a focal point instead of relying on auto-focus. yay!)

This shot of me on the bench? It took about probably a dozen attempts before Ross got one I liked AND was in focus.

I’m also trying to take photos in different settings. This is a park right outside of downtown, and part of the park is elevated so you can get some really cool views of the skyline. It’s a little silly; I’ve known about this park for a while but the entire time I’ve lived in this area, I never went to it. One benefit of doing this blog is that I’m discovering new places, or I’m looking at locations with an eye for seeing it if would make for a good backdrop for outfit photos. I’m even keeping a list filled with places that I think would be good for photos. For a while this past year, I kind of abandoned this blog, but now I feel pretty renewed and inspired.